Storytailer

STORYTAILER LLC
CHAPEL HILL

Buffer: What It Is and Why You Want It

By

When I went to BlogWorld LA, I met up with a friend of mine, James Stayton. As I’m walking around googly-eyed at the likes of Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, etc., he jumps when he sees this one guy with a “Buffer” shirt on. We go over and James starts telling this guy how much he loves Buffer and about how much he likes the new features, etc. I had never heard of Buffer so I asked the guy (who turned out to be a co-founder, Leo Wid) to show me how it worked. I signed up (as it’s free) and told him I’d check it out. At the time, the Facebook posting was still in beta, (he let me in on the very tail of that) but now, I believe, it’s live for anyone who signs up.

So, what is Buffer?

Buffer is an easy service that allows you to share information without overwhelming your networks (the networks in this article I’m referring to are Twitter and Facebook). How it does this is that they use an algorithm that determines what the best times of the day (ie. most trafficked and used) are and it schedules them for those times automatically. It also “buffers” your posts so that you aren’t sending a ton out at once and overwhelming your followers/friends. It will determine how many you should be posting and automatically schedule them for when they are most likely to be read or clicked through and it will space them out in time for you also. There is also a “Post Now” button if you don’t want to send it later.

I’ve been (and I am) a Hootsuite Pro user for a long time. I love Hootsuite but it is a pain to schedule tweets with any kind of strategy involved. I still use Hootsuite but now I use Buffer as a compliment to it so that I can share great content without having to even THINK about when I should tweet or post something and how much is too much, etc.

…and one of my FAVORITE parts of Buffer is that it allows me to use my custom URL shortener automatically! You just plug in your shortener information (in this case, I use bit.ly for my shortener –  arni.es) and it automatically uses YOUR shortener for any websites you add to your buffer. Hootsuite charges $50 per month if you want this feature!

Anyways, I don’t get this excited about a new service (God knows there are plenty of them popping up all the time.) but this one has me pumped. I’ve been using it now for a couple of weeks and I love it.

A dealership (or any business) could use this to pre-load a week’s worth of content very easily then sit back and sell some cars!

Check it out , sign up and send your first tweet by clicking HERE!

Consumers Now Have the Ability to Block Your GoogleAds

By

Google announced yesterday via its blog, that it had instituted a feature in Google search and GMail ad transparency. This change will give consumers the ability to see why ads are being delivered (ie. what previous searches triggered the ads) as well as the ability to block ads from a particular company/advertiser. This option is available for all Google Ads delivered to a consumer.

Is it a cause for concern? Probably not as I believe a low percentage of people will actually utilize this feature, but it is certainly something you need to be aware of. I would equate this to “hiding” a company from your News Feed on Facebook, in a sense.

Below is an example of what a consumer would see should they choose to go into the “Ads Preferences Manager”.

Do you think this will have any impact on your ability to target consumers or is this a non-factor?

Consumers Want Video Walk-Arounds. Here’s Proof!

By

In my days with HomeNet Automotive, a new feature was released that allowed our customers to upload live video into their inventory for distribution to the third-party websites that would allow it.

Being in sales, I wanted to have a real video in which I could show potential clients the possibilities and an actual example of what one would look like so I enlisted help from a friend of mine who’s a GM at a nearby dealer group to allow me to video one of his employees doing a walk-around.
After filming it, I used it here and there when showing a demo of IOL Pro, HomeNet’s core inventory management software. After I left HomeNet Automotive, I promptly forgot about it.
Recently, I came across it in my YouTube video list and was ASTONISHED to see that it had almost 12,000 views in about 21 months! That’s an average of 570 views per month! This is without ANY exposure or publicity whatsoever. It was not on a blog post or anywhere. I can only guess that these 12,000 people came across this video via keyword searches either within YouTube or via a Google search. I did a quick keyword search and was astonished to see that my non-distributed or promoted video ranked 2nd in Google organic search results!
venza

Imagine if this video had actually been a part of that dealer’s actual inventory on their website as well as all the third-party sites. Given that this was a new vehicle, it could have been added to all of the listings for this model and year vehicle in their inventory. They could DOMINATE Google searches for their brands.

The proof is in the pudding. I highly doubt the people watching these videos decided randomly to watch a video walk-around of a Toyota Venza. It’s more likely that these were consumer’s interested in that vehicle.

This is advertising GOLD and cost them absolutely nothing.

If you want to watch it, here’s the video:

Google Encrypts Searches By Default – Cripples Google Analytics

By

On October 18, 2011, Google announced via its blog that it is setting the default search settings for all people signed into their Google accounts to an encrypted search.

What does this mean for you? It means that your Google Analytics will no longer tell you keyword data on any person which clicked through to your site while logged into their Google account. This is very crippling from an SEO standpoint as keyword data is vital in your SEO and conversion efforts. Knowing what people were searching for that lead them to the link that they clicked on which brought them to your sight is valuable information to any company’s marketing efforts.

Keep in mind that Google has offered the encrypted search setting for a while now. The key difference is that consumers would have had to go into their setting and manually change this to an encrypted search and, really, who would really do this? Now, it’s encrypted by default, and, using the same logic, which consumers are going to go into their setting and change it to unencrypted? I believe most people would choose to give out less information than more given the option (which they’ve always had). However, I also believe, just like with Facebook privacy settings, that most people will not go into the settings and change them or learn them for that matter. The average consumer lives by default and if the default is now encrypted, it just means that your Google Analytics reports will contain less key information in them.

There is only one exception to this withholding of keyword conversion data. Encrypted keyword data will still be provided to Google Adword advertisers. That’s certainly a value add to entice more businesses to use Google Adwords and a way to leverage and monetize information for Google.

What are your thoughts?

(Originally published October 20, 2011 on Dealer magazine)

The Ethics of Online Reviews

By

This article started as an investigation into a company providing services to the automotive industry,Review Boost. I didn’t know much about the company, only that it had received some negative press and accusations of gaming online reviews. In fact, it even had a local San Antonio television station, KSAT, run a news segment regarding a dealership who used their services. There have been blog articles written questioning the authenticity of the reviews as well as articles written in both Automotive News and F&I Magazine.

The importance of reputation management has been increasingly on dealers’ minds, being, from the dealers I spoke with and interviewed for DrivingSalesTV, the hot topic of this year’s NADA convention. The FTC is cracking down on companies engaging in posting misleading reviews, legislators are pushing for stricter laws regarding this practice, legal advisors are reporting that a company exposes themselves tolegal risks by engaging in this act, and a California law went into effect Jan 1, 2011 making it a criminal activity. Add to these variables the fact that search engines are starting to increase the importance of online reviews in their algorithms and incorporating them into search results, naturally, when they popped up on my radar again after partnering up with an industry vendor, I was curious as to why the partnership happened and I started asking questions and doing some homework.

[Edit: After sharing my article with representatives from Review Boost, they informed me that they decided not to move forward with the partnership I referred to above.]

I spoke with William, the owner of Review Boost, at length. We spoke for upwards of an hour and he walked me through what his company does. First, to be clear, they deny all accusations of gaming reviews and/or writing the reviews themselves. William was very pleasant, if understandably nervous during our conversation but, in my opinion, sincerely wanted to clear the air regarding what his company does. Without revealing too many of his proprietary practices, which he shared with me, I didn’t get the impression that he is doing anything wrong at all. Now, given that there were already a ton of articles investigating and breaking down why other people feel that they are, I didn’t feel the need to rehash what others have already done and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

See, William isn’t in the car business. Review Boost began assisting local businesses like dentists, doctors, and such. It ended up that dealers account for about 30% of their current client base but this wasn’t by design. The crux of their strategy, which is what surprised me the most, is that they administer a website called myreviewboost.com in which they post reviews collected from clients of their dealers. These reviews are then syndicated across about 40 online review directories through partnerships with them. I was surprised that such a syndication was allowed but I did some investigating and, not only is it allowed, but it is encouraged. Judysbook.com, in example, promotes review sharing partnerships openly.

I reached out to Google themselves. The fact that they syndicate reviews is telling about their policies but they did point out within their Review Posting Guidelines that conflicts of interest, including misrepresentation and/or posting reviews on behalf of others is not allowed.

In essence, William’s company is soliciting reviews only from the customers which the dealer provides contact information to them. They do not edit the reviews – whether positive or negative. They will moderate a negative review, if received, allowing the dealer a chance to resolve the problem and then, when the dealer reports that the problem has been resolved, resurveying the customer to get an updated review. In my mind, this absolutely explains why almost every review is positive.

If I were a dealer who needed to increase my online reputation, I certainly wouldn’t hand over an unhappy customer’s e-mail address to be reviewed. In fact, I know many dealers that will occassionally RDR cars to the factory with incorrect information to avoid a potential negative CSI survey and/or “buy” surveys from their customers through offers of free oil changes or something to encourage their consumers to return the surveys to THEM and not mail them in to their OEM unscreened.

William’s strategy made perfect sense to me and the syndication accounted for the reason for the same review appearing on multiple sites. So while this practice may be viewed by some to be unethical, it’s not illegal or in violation of these directories terms of service. They’re simply taking advantage of existing online directories willingness to crawl their review site to maximize the SEO value of each review they collected from their client’s customers.

So, is this article about Review Boost? No. The real story is what is ethical in the online reputation management arena.

I’m sure that we would all agree that posting fake reviews is unethical and, in some cases, illegal.

What about these practices?

Posting REAL reviews, verbatim, by your customers on their behalf with their permission.

Screening WHO gets reviewed to avoid negative reviews.

Choosing which reviews get displayed (ie. avoiding sites in which negative reviews exist)

The fact is that online reputation management, and the process in which dealers are utilizing, are becoming more and more important for the many reasons I described above.

How do you feel about this? What’s ethical or unethical regarding online reputation management?

(Originally published on DrivingSales)

What Did Google Do?

By

(Originally published on Dealer magazine)




UPDATE: 5/12/2011: The $500 million set aside was for a Department of Justice investigation surrounding whether Google allowed online pharmacies to use Google’s advertising platforms to illegally sell prescription drugs. LINK


It’s all over the news today. Google reported in its SEC filing that they have set aside $500 million for an anticipated settlement into a Department of Justice investigation of the use of Google Adwords by “certain advertisers.” The comment is intentionally vague and details of the investigation itself have not been released. The statement in question is this:



“In May 2011, in connection with a potential resolution of an investigation by the United States Department of Justice into the use of Google advertising by certain advertisers, we accrued $500 million for the three month period ended March 31, 2011. Although we cannot predict the ultimate outcome of this matter, we believe it will not have a material adverse effect on our business, consolidated financial position, results of operations, or cash flows.” (Note 16 in filing)


Many car dealerships use Google Adwords as part of their online marketing strategy. The phrasing of the comment is interesting. “Certain advertisers” can mean many things ranging from a few to a large amount. “Certain” doesn’t mean small, it only means “not all” in this context. Then we have the interesting part that states this investigation stems from the use of the advertising by its users (implying that it’s not by Google itself). If that’s the case, it’s curious that Google is under investigation. If its advertisers were misusing the Google Adwords program, you’d think it would be an internal violation of their Terms of Service issue, not something that Google itself would be under investigation for much less anticipating a $500 million settlement.


It would seem logical that Google played some part in allowing (or assisting) in this misuse. What other scenario would explain why the Department of Justice is investigating, and holding liable, Google itself? Speculation includes favoring some advertisers over others, fixing its bidding system to maximize bidding amounts, skewing search results to favor its own products and penalizing advertisers that also advertise with other search engines. It is also unclear whether Google would be paying this potential settlement to the DOJ or to its advertisers. The Department of Justice has yet to comment.


This investigation has a potential impact on just about every aspect of the automotive business: from manufacturers to dealerships to 3rd party lead providers. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and exactly what Google is under investigation for.


$500 million is a pretty hefty figure for it to be on the line for so the assumption would be that this is not a small violation (or potential) of something. Considering Google’s income comes primarily from its advertising, it’s hard to believe the investigation is somehow unrelated.


The conspiracy theorist in me is very interested in hearing more about this.

Are Check-Ins Useful For Business?

By

(Originally published on Dealer magazine)




Yesterday, I got to attend the NBA Playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks with 2 friends and I credit it all to a Facebook check-in. I was planning on attending the game anyways, however, while browsing my Facebook news feed, I noticed a friend who doesn’t live in my area had checked into Los Angeles airport. I didn’t know he was coming into the area. I reached out to them and within an hour we had made plans to attend the game together. Without that check-in, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to attend the game with some industry friends.


As I thought of this, I thought of one of the first things we teach all new salespeople. Tell everyone you know or meet that you sell cars. When I was in retail, there was nothing more frustrating than finding out after the fact that someone I knew had bought a vehicle somewhere else…especially if they bought the same brand I was selling. I also didn’t want to be “in your face” with everyone by yelling “Hey, I sell cars” everywhere I went. What better way to tell people you know that you sell cars in a passive, non-aggressive manner than to “check-in” at your dealership on a daily basis.


By doing this, you can leverage the check-in to inform your social network and keep it fresh in their minds that you sell cars. By doing this one simple thing, I guarantee that when it comes time to buy a car, they’ll know that you sell them.





Brand Protection: The Line In The Sand

By

(Originally published on Dealer magazine) 




In our online world, many companies’ brands are increasingly being challenged by others. Dealers are increasingly becoming more aware of the importance of reputation management. Vendors are shouting its importance through blog articles, conference session and webinars. Many people only look at one aspect of brand/reputation management – online reviews. While reviews are certainly important, they are only one aspect of it. Search results, domain names, PPC campaigns and online content also must be monitored in any company’s brand and reputation management programs.


There are many “types” of brand attacks your company can be forced to deal with ranging from those that are hostile to those with good intent. Here are some types:



  • Domain squatters – These are individuals that buy domain names (website addresses) that include other company’s trademarked names with the express intent to sell them back to those companies for profit.


  • Competitor attacks – These would include people who buy domain names, create content or run Google pay-per-click ads with the intent to use your branding for their benefit. In example: Your competing dealer buying domains, writing blog articles or running PPC campaigns that are designed to appear when consumers search for YOUR name.


  • Supporters/Fans – Yes, even your supporters and fans, despite their good intentions can also attack your brand. More about this.

Which do you deal with? All of them? Some of them?


The first two are the easiest to decide. Of course you don’t want your competitor running around driving your consumers (actual or potential) to them. I’m fairly certain that you also don’t want to have your brand name hijacked by a domain squatter and be held ransom for some exorbitant amount of money. There is at least one industry vendor who screams to dealers that they MUST control search engine results by buying domains that contain their names and branding then quietly buys domains that belong to others. There are certainly moral dilemmas involved here. On the one hand, you want to maximize your exposure to people not looking for you but, at the same time, you don’t want your competitors doing it. I’ve heard many people complain about their competition doing this to them and arguing how it’s “dirty” and “immoral” and then opposite comments resembling “you snooze, you lose” (usually followed by a snicker).


The last one is where many companies waiver and don’t know what to do. You can take the open path and allow all of your fans and supporters to create any content they want or you can protect your brand from these actions also. Every business likes and wants fans and you certainly don’t want to alienate them. Your company may even have “partners” that, while in support of your brand, utilize it for their interests, even if you benefit in some way.


What’s the “right” response?


Here’s my advice:


Any use of your brand or trademark that allows others any amount of control over your name without your permission and consent should be treated the same whether it’s out of malice or support.


Some would call this extreme and disagree. That’s fine.


Let’s take some examples of extremely popular brands with gigantic fan bases: Apple, Lucasarts and Toyota.


“Between January 2008 and May 2010, Apple Inc. filed more than 350 cases with the U.S. Trademark Office alone..” [link] Apple aggressively protects its brand in all cases. There aren’t many days that go by that you don’t see Apple suing somebody or sending “cease and desist” letters for some violation of their trademark whether it’s from companies utilizing part of their names (ie. iWhatever), fans creating websites supporting (or not supporting) Apple products whether or not they actually contain any reference to “Apple” in the domain, or blogs leaking unannounced product information. Do they piss their fans off? Sure, at times they do. Do they still do it? Absolutely.


Lucasarts, the owner of the Star Wars brand, has arguably one of the largest fan bases in the world. Whether its companies selling knock off products , websites that are “close” to something they own (Note: They sued Digg because the popular social media sharing site sounded too much like an old video game they made titled “The Dig”),  or fans creating (and growing) the Star Wars brand through fan created content or websites, they don’t care. It’s their brand and name and they are very aggressive in controlling it. They’ve even gone so far as to say if you create anything that involves or uses any of our trademarked assets or intellectual property, we own it. Go ahead, draw a picture of R2-D2 right now. Yeah, they own it. Sorry.


Any Toyota dealer out there can attest to the aggressiveness in which Toyota protects its branding. I worked as an Internet Director for two dealer groups that owned Toyota stores. I remember all the hoops I had to jump through whether it was with Google or Toyota just trying to buy Google pay-per-click ads containing our dealership’s name. I even had to argue with Toyota to buy my own dealership’s exact domain name! Go ahead. Buy a domain or try and place a GoogleAd containing the word “Toyota.” See what happens.


While your company is arguably not as popular or has as much of a fan base as either Apple or Lucasarts, does that mean you shouldn’t take the same position? I would argue that they have even MORE to fear from this standpoint than any dealership would ever have to worry about. How many people could you potentially upset versus either of whose companies? I would guess they have some of the best attorneys and brightest employees on the planet making these types of policy decisions. Any of us would happily trade places with them in terms of company success, popularity and brand awareness.


How do supporters of your brand hurt you? It may not be so obvious. Think about a consumer searching your brand on Google. When the results appear, they see all sorts of content, which you may or may not own. Any content that uses your name but doesn’t drive the traffic or business to you is an attack. Whether it’s a Google pay-per-click ad, a fan community, or a competitor trying to use your name to drive the consumers to themselves, it is all the same.


Look, I’m not against your business having fans. You should create and encourage your raving fans to be fans. You should identify the ones with the most influence and have them shouting how great your business is from the top of a mountain. That being said, there are many ways in which your fans can support you without innocently (or not so innocently) attacking your brand. They can encourage their friends to join YOUR community, leave reviews FOR you, write blog articles saying how great you treated them, and SHARE your content with their social network. Your brand protection and your fans’ support can coexist without your trademark being violated. Encourage fans that are supporting you the right way, absolutely.


If you come across a fan that IS using your name, identity or branding that, in any way, could potentially confuse your consumers or drive traffic to themselves that you would have received had that content not existed, you should take action. I would advise that the first thing you should do is reach out to the supporter, thank them for their support, explain your brand protection policies and ask that they cease, alter, or turn-over your trademarked assets (depending on what the trademark violation is).


What do you do if they refuse? Well, if they refuse to respect your wishes and comply, you only have two choices: allow them to retain control of the asset(s) or not.


We’ve all heard the saying that 1 happy person will tell 1 person about their experience while 1 unhappy person will tell 100.


Keep in mind when deciding whether to enforce your trademark that it only takes one bad experience to turn that happy person controlling trademarked assets from a raving fan into avocal opponent. I would advise that rather than wait until that moment arrives to deal with it, you become proactive and take control of your assets. None of the companies I used as examples are where they are from being passive.


If you reinforce the ship before the attack, you minimize your company’s vulnerability and spend less time doing damage control and more time on building a better ship.

The Ethics of Online Reviews

By

This article started as an investigation into a company providing services to the automotive industry,Review Boost. I didn’t know much about the company, only that it had received some negative press and accusations of gaming online reviews. In fact, it even had a local San Antonio television station, KSAT, run a news segment regarding a dealership who used their services. There have been blog articles written questioning the authenticity of the reviews as well as articles written in both Automotive News and F&I Magazine.

The importance of reputation management has been increasingly on dealers’ minds, being, from the dealers I spoke with and interviewed for DrivingSalesTV, the hot topic of this year’s NADA convention. The FTC is cracking down on companies engaging in posting misleading reviews, legislators are pushing for stricter laws regarding this practice, legal advisors are reporting that a company exposes themselves tolegal risks by engaging in this act, and a California law went into effect Jan 1, 2011 making it a criminal activity. Add to these variables the fact that search engines are starting to increase the importance of online reviews in their algorithms and incorporating them into search results, naturally, when they popped up on my radar again after partnering up with an industry vendor, I was curious as to why the partnership happened and I started asking questions and doing some homework.

[Edit: After sharing my article with representatives from Review Boost, they informed me that they decided not to move forward with the partnership I referred to above.]

I spoke with William, the owner of Review Boost, at length. We spoke for upwards of an hour and he walked me through what his company does. First, to be clear, they deny all accusations of gaming reviews and/or writing the reviews themselves. William was very pleasant, if understandably nervous during our conversation but, in my opinion, sincerely wanted to clear the air regarding what his company does. Without revealing too many of his proprietary practices, which he shared with me, I didn’t get the impression that he is doing anything wrong at all. Now, given that there were already a ton of articles investigating and breaking down why other people feel that they are, I didn’t feel the need to rehash what others have already done and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

See, William isn’t in the car business. Review Boost began assisting local businesses like dentists, doctors, and such. It ended up that dealers account for about 30% of their current client base but this wasn’t by design. The crux of their strategy, which is what surprised me the most, is that they administer a website called myreviewboost.com in which they post reviews collected from clients of their dealers. These reviews are then syndicated across about 40 online review directories through partnerships with them. I was surprised that such a syndication was allowed but I did some investigating and, not only is it allowed, but it is encouraged. Judysbook.com, in example, promotes review sharing partnerships openly.

I reached out to Google themselves. The fact that they syndicate reviews is telling about their policies but they did point out within their Review Posting Guidelines that conflicts of interest, including misrepresentation and/or posting reviews on behalf of others is not allowed.

In essence, William’s company is soliciting reviews only from the customers which the dealer provides contact information to them. They do not edit the reviews – whether positive or negative. They will moderate a negative review, if received, allowing the dealer a chance to resolve the problem and then, when the dealer reports that the problem has been resolved, resurveying the customer to get an updated review. In my mind, this absolutely explains why almost every review is positive.

If I were a dealer who needed to increase my online reputation, I certainly wouldn’t hand over an unhappy customer’s e-mail address to be reviewed. In fact, I know many dealers that will occassionally RDR cars to the factory with incorrect information to avoid a potential negative CSI survey and/or “buy” surveys from their customers through offers of free oil changes or something to encourage their consumers to return the surveys to THEM and not mail them in to their OEM unscreened.

William’s strategy made perfect sense to me and the syndication accounted for the reason for the same review appearing on multiple sites. So while this practice may be viewed by some to be unethical, it’s not illegal or in violation of these directories terms of service. They’re simply taking advantage of existing online directories willingness to crawl their review site to maximize the SEO value of each review they collected from their client’s customers.

So, is this article about Review Boost? No. The real story is what is ethical in the online reputation management arena.

I’m sure that we would all agree that posting fake reviews is unethical and, in some cases, illegal.

What about these practices?

  • Posting REAL reviews, verbatim, by your customers on their behalf with their permission.
  • Screening WHO gets reviewed to avoid negative reviews.
  • Choosing which reviews get displayed (ie. avoiding sites in which negative reviews exist)

The fact is that online reputation management, and the process in which dealers are utilizing, are becoming more and more important for the many reasons I described above.

How do you feel about this? What’s ethical or unethical regarding online reputation management?

Originally published on DrivingSales.com

Creating Revenue through the new Groupon Stores

By

Last night, the popular consumer shopping website Groupon announced the implementation of Groupon Stores.

For those unfamiliar with Groupon, here is the skinny: Groupon offers customers discounts on products and services in which Groupon has negotiated with the business for discounts based on an agreed upon number of people accepting the offer. They offer 1 deal per day, per city and then market this deal to the members in that market. They currently have over 33 million subscribers.

Groupon collects a 50% commission on sales from the business for each offer BUT, since they only offered one deal per day, the exposure was fantastic since everybody saw it. It didn’t get “lost in the crowd”. It was still a VERY steep cost but the advantage businesses have found from utilizing Groupon in their marketing efforts is from attracting NEW customers and focusing on customer retention.

With the launch of Groupon Stores, businesses can set up their own Groupon distribution presence and offer (and control) their own discounts. There is still a commission but it has been drastically reduced to only 10% of sales.

Groupon is promoting several features of it’s new stores:

  • “Setup a permanent (and free!) e-commerce presence on Groupon for promoting their business.
  • Create their own offers to run deals whenever they want.
  • Submit deals to be promoted to Groupon subscribers through email and the Deal Feed.
  • Get customers to follow their Groupon Store, and stay in touch by sending messages through the daily email and deal feed.”

This could be leveraged well in your service department by running oil change specials, tire deals, etc. It would give your dealership the exposure through Groupon via the free business-specific page they’ll provide.

This new page will probably offer your dealership some SEO value as well but my advice would be to not set up a page if you don’t plan to offer any discounts. Too many dealerships have “Specials” pages on their own website that don’t have any specials on them. Don’t compound that huge mistake by participating in more “deal” websites in which you don’t have any deals.

The biggest benefit to utilizing Groupon’s Store is that they will market it to their members in your area through both e-mail and via the other announced new feature – the Deal Feed, which is sort of like a Facebook wall for consumers to see the deals offered in their area as well as deals offered from businesses they “follow”. This does come at a cost (10% of sales from the offered deal) but the marketing power to attract new customers is huge.

With the rumor-mill steadily increasing that Google is going to  buy Groupon, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Groupon deals integrated into Google Place Pages. This would increase the perceived value of Google Place Pages to consumers in that it would centralize a single page in which consumers can get business information, see business reviews and see what deals the merchant is currently offering.

The new feature rolls out today in a few markets but will be available shortly to everyone.

 Originally published on DrivingSales.com

 

Contact Me